


What's Past is Prologue: Central London, 1952

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: The Hour
Genre: Gen, Jo Stafford, Minor Original Character(s), Pre-Canon, unfulfilled yearning, virginia woolf - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 22:39:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9519053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: Freddie Lyon goes to a party.





	

He was never under the illusion that he was a particularly wanted guest. But he had been perhaps a fraction too ostentatiously engaged in finalizing his proofs while the other copy-writers were discussing their plans for the evening. So he had matched the false casualness of “I say, Lyon, why don’t you come along?” in his acceptance of the invitation. And here they all were: magnanimous Rupert, pugnacious John Keene, Giulia from the typists’ room… and himself. 

He is constantly in orbit. Constantly he is circling the circles around him, observing, commenting. Someone is always impatient. He fails utterly to enter into enthusiasms about sport, about music. And the conversations about politics fail entirely to engage him. He cannot resist injecting a question of policy into an idealistic discussion better suited (he thinks) to undergraduate vigils than to the evenings like this, crowded with young people ostensibly hungry for the life of the capital. Metaphorical hunger brings, of course, its literal counterpart to mind; but he does not trust himself to dine off canapés without getting sick from the unaccustomed indulgence. 

He wanders off again, drifts up against a knot of discussants with Rupert at its center. He has always felt a half-reluctant affinity for Rupert Blount. Rupert towers naturally over him, and never looms; the red-gold hair is always severely slicked out of sensuality; and he always gives the impression of working hard over his thoughts. 

“But it’s Clarissa’s habit of doing her own flowers that’s crucial,” Rupert is saying earnestly.

“Aren’t you taking that rather for granted?” John Keene had been the one to extend the invitation; but he looks faintly resentful of Freddie’s presence; or perhaps his sourness has some other source. “She tells everyone it’s important to her, but do we really know that? Do we even know it’s a habit?”

“What reason do we have to disbelieve her?” asks dark-eyed Giulia, her soft voice softly accented. She stands—deliberately, Freddie thinks—squarely between Rupert and Keene; but her body angles itself, as if involuntarily, towards the former.

“Oh, honestly,” says Keene. “That’s a bit rich. She’ll tell herself anything that’s convenient. We know she will.”

“That’s ungenerous, surely,” ventures Freddie. “What you’re suggesting is that she’ll not only lie to herself, but lie to you. Is a flower-arranging habit—or lack thereof?—really worth lying to one’s friends about?” There is a moment or two of rather deadly silence. He is too familiar with it not to recognize its quality; but he is at a loss to know how he has gone wrong.

“That,” says an unfamiliar voice at his elbow, “is a very good question. Sorry I was so long, John. How do we know who Mrs. Dalloway’s audience is?”

“That’s a good point,” says Rupert, and appears to believe it. “I always thought she was explaining her life to herself, as it were—and we just get a look in—but Freddie may be right.”

Freddie smiles wanly, and sidelong looks to the girl who had spoken.

“I think she’s perfectly honest,” says the newcomer. She is—Freddie realizes it with something like vertigo—exquisite. She gleams green-and-gold like a scarab, her flared skirts almost touching the leg of his trousers. “We couldn’t like her if she weren’t.”

Keene makes a contemptuous noise. “Like her. As if the point of a Woolf novel were to like the people in it.”

“Well, for Clarissa, it is,” insists the girl. “It is important that we like her. However much a muddle she makes of things, she is trying—she is trying to find the most honest thing to do, the most loving thing to do, the most generous thing to do, always… and she doesn’t really care how it looks. Quite the opposite of ‘the admirable Hugh.’”

Rupert nearly hoots with laughter. “One almost feels sorry for Hugh. So mercilessly skewered. But yes, one could see it that way…”

“I’ll see myself to a drink,” says Keene.

The discussion is well-launched; someone named Septimus is brought into it. Freddie, feeling light-headed, closes his eyes briefly. On the gramophone Jo Stafford is playing, unexpectedly. He opens his eyes again. The scarab girl is listening, lips parted, to Rupert’s discussion of an airplane as a symbol of progress. Freddie pulls himself together, shifts his weight preparatory to drifting off again. And then the scarab girl lays her hand on his arm.

“But don’t you think,” she says, “that the airplane is a cause of fear, too?”

“I should think it could hardly be otherwise,” says Freddie. He is feeling curiously weightless; the glass of wine proving too much on an empty stomach, he tells himself. “Perhaps, though,” he adds, “I’m thinking of it too much in light of the war.” 

“Well, Septimus certainly thinks of it that way,” says Giulia. “For his war, of course.”

“Do you think so?” asks Rupert. “I wonder—since you speak Italian—if you’d check my reading of the passage with Lucia and the psychologist… there must be a copy in the flat…” They wander off together, Rupert’s hand hovering a respectfully desirous half-inch away from the back of her wine-colored frock.

“ _Mrs. Dalloway_ ,” says the scarab girl softly, following the couple with her eyes. “Virginia Woolf.” She looks up at him. “Have you really never read it?”

Freddie shakes his head. Her hand is still on his sleeve, as if forgotten there. “I didn’t mean to pretend I had.”

“I know.” She smiles. “Look, do you want to escape?”

 “What?” _Yes. Yes. Show me how._

“I’m not propositioning you; you’d be doing me a favor. Agree to take me home before John Keene comes back. I’ll tell him I wasn’t feeling well… and I’ll make you dinner as a reward for missing the party and coming all the way out to Clapham.” 

“Done.” He is slightly surprised to find his vocal cords still in working order. “It’d be a pleasure,” he adds, feeling the need of formality.

“Lovely,” says the scarab girl. “I’m Bel. Bel Rowley.”

“Lyon,” he says, out of habit. “Freddie Lyon.”

“Come on then, Freddie Lyon.”


End file.
